


After the Glory Fades (The Last Lesson Learned Remix)

by Redrikki



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-07 13:56:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15909603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/pseuds/Redrikki
Summary: Glory fades, but what truly matters remains. Diana takes a moment to remember everything her aunt taught her.





	After the Glory Fades (The Last Lesson Learned Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beatrice_Otter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Otter/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Five Things Antiope Taught Diana (And One Thing She Never Got the Chance To)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13068666) by [Beatrice_Otter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Otter/pseuds/Beatrice_Otter). 



Diana bent her head to receive her victory laurels. She had always been able to throw farther than any Amazon, but today it was her aim that had won her the javelin toss at this year’s war games. 

“Well done, Diana,” Mother said, laying the laurels on her head. “I haven’t seen a throw like that since Apollodosia.”

Apollodosia? Diana didn’t know her and she knew everyone on Themyscira. She must have been among the fallen in the war with Ares. Diana frowned, suddenly unsure of the compliment. How good could this Apollodosia have been if she was dead?

“Was she a great warrior then?” Diana asked, hopping down from the place of honor and slipping in between Aunt Antiope and her mother as they headed back towards the lists. As the winner of the last tournament, it was her duty and privilege to assist her mother and aunt in judging the next. 

“Very and a good friend,” Aunt Antiope said, a wistful smile playing about her lips. “She had a voice to rival the Muses.” 

“Oh?” Diana said, struggling not to sound bored. She would much rather hear of Apollodosia’s exploits in battle than her singing. 

Aunt Antiope looked at her sharply and Diana supposed her disinterest had been more obvious than she’d hoped. “Do you know the weaving song?” Antiope asked.

“Athena’s invocation.” Diana nodded. “Everyone knows it.” Thanks to Ares, the goddess of wisdom and weaving was just as dead as the other gods, yet the weavers always sang the invocation each time that took up their work. Maybe to honor her memory, or just because it was a beautiful song. 

“Apollodosia wrote it.” 

Diana didn’t know what to say to that. She had heard that song all her life. As far as she had been concerned, it was like Athena herself: sprung fully formed into the world. But Diana had been wrong. It had been written by a woman named Apollodosia in the time before Thermyscira, back when there where goddesses to be invoked. Now they were dead, woman and goddess both, but the song lived on. Diana wondered which the weavers thought of when they sang it. 

“Glory fades, Diana,” Aunt Antiope said, tapping the laurels which were already turning brittle in the heat. “Glory fades, but what truly matters remains.”

____________________

They drank at the pub where Steve had introduced her to Charlie and Sameer. Outside, people cheered and danced in the street. At the table, they howled with laughter.

“And then, and then,” Charlie struggled to force the words out past his laughter, “Steve, the wee daft bugger, says ‘That didn’t go at all like I planned it.” 

Chief gasped and clutched his sides while Sameer pounded the table and roared. Diana didn’t understand all the details of Charlie’s story, but found herself chuckling along anyway. An hour ago she couldn’t have imagined she’d ever laugh again. Grief was a funny thing. 

“Oh,” Etta sighed, wiping away her tears of mirth, “that certainly sounds like our Captain Trevor. Always improvising himself into trouble.” 

“True,” Sameer said, “but he always improvised himself out.” His smile died as if struck by the memory of the one time Steve _hadn’t_ found his way out. Their cheerful mood shattered like a fallen amphora and a dark pall descended over the table.

“How did you meet Steve, Diana?” Chief asked as the silence grew oppressive.

“Is it true you lived on an island of just women?” Sameer leaned forward, eager to hear her story.

“Yes,” Diana nodded. “Before Steve, no man had ever set foot on Thermyscira. He crashed his airplane in the waters off our shores and I dove in to fish him out. I had never seen someone so strange,” she said, warming to her story. “Bristly little hairs all over his face. Heavy, ugly clothes. And no breasts!” She shook her head. “I asked him if he was a man and he said, ‘Why? Don’t I look like one?’”

They all laughed at that. Not as uproariously as they had for Charlie’s story, but it was enough to keep their collective grief at bay. 

“But the Germans had followed him to invade our shores,” Diana continued. They were coming to the terrible part. She was sure she could get through it though if she just thought of it like one of her mother’s stories and less like something that had happened to her. “You should have seen our warriors as they rode them down. They were glorious!”

Aunt, no, _General_ Antiope had ridden at the front as a true leader should. The wind had swept her hair back as she came, spear in had and the light of battle in her eyes. She had been smiling. After all the years of practice and waiting, the time to fulfill her purpose had finally come. She had been wild with the joy of it. 

“My aunt—” Diana found herself unable to continue. “My aunt—“ she tried again and burst into tears. The men looked at her with something like alarm, but she couldn’t make herself stop. “In my arms—she died—protecting me,” she sobbed brokenly. 

“Oh, sweetie,” Etta cooed, pulling Diana into her arms. “You let it out,” she said, stroking Diana’s hair. “Let it all out.”

Diana let the tears come. Back in her flat, Etta had said that keeping busy would help to hold the grief at bay and she had been right. Since Antiope died, Diana hadn’t given herself a moment’s rest to think about it. She’d distracted herself with her mission, with Steve. Now the mission was over, Steve was gone, and her aunt was still dead. She shook with the force of it and cried until she could cry no more.

“Alright then?” Etta asked when Diana finally pulled away from the comforting embrace of her arms. “Do you want to talk about her? Your aunt, I mean? It helps sometimes.”

Diana shrugged and rubbed at her tear-stained face. It had certainly helped when they had talked about Steve. She looked around the table and none of the men raised any objections. 

“She was our general, the greatest warrior among us. Everything I know of fighting, I learned from her.” They all looked suitably impressed, but there had been so much more to Antiope than her prowess with a bow or sword or spear. “She taught me how to lead. How to follow. How to be part of a team." 

All the things that had led her here. Would Diana have left Thermyscira against her mother's orders if her aunt hadn't taught her the art of honorable disobedience? Would she have stayed with Steve's batch of misfits if her aunt hadn't taught her the value of teamwork? She doubted it. 

"And she taught me so much of love. She and her wife were so devoted to each other. I—” She found herself chocking up again. Diana had always yearned for that: to have someone look at her as Aunt Antiope looked at Aunt Menalippe, to look at someone as Aunt Menalippe looked at her. She’d thought she’d found that in Steve. Maybe she had, but it was lost to her now.

“Wait,” Charlie said before she could start crying again. “Wife?”

Marriage was different here, she supposed, in Man’s World. “Men are necessary for procreation,” she said, recalling her words to Steve when they first began their journey, “not for love, or for pleasure.” Steve had shown her just how pleasurable men could be, but he was, as he had said, above average. 

Charlie and Sameer looked gobsmacked at their own irrelevance and Etta sputtered, thoroughly scandalized. Chief just chuckled. “She sounds like an amazing woman. To Diana’s aunt,” he said, raising his glass.

“To Antiope,” Diana said, raising her own.

“To Antiope,” they chorused and drank.


End file.
